178 Sara 
j kx y 
THE WAYSIDE GLADIOLUS GARDEN A PREM tat 
ELLA W. WRIGHT, PROP, Pie igene 
CANTON, MAINE LU. S. Dopo: 
GREETINGS : 
A GLAD and prosperous New Year to all our friends and customers, 
new and old, 
Every farmer and gardener in Maine surely knows what an awful sea- 
son the summer of 1954 was! With many it ranked as a major disaster, 
I, for one, would like to forget it, as Ihave the flood of 1936, It 
is just a bad dream I had, Suffice it to say that spring was so de- 
layed by cold and rains that our blooming season was about two weeks 
late, When it did arrive our glads were grand, Most of them seemed to 
reppond to the extra moisture, Of course we didn't have to use our 
irrigation system at all, except to put on Ra-Pid-Gro,Carol and Edna 
were most unwelcome visitors, After the damage.done by them and the 
never-ending rains that followed, we felt that we were doomed, How- 
ever we did get our bulbs harvested in good shape, and have a nice 
clean lot of bulbs to sell, and I hope plenty in large sines. 
{I can't resist telling you about some of the new varieties we tried 
this year, There were the usual disappointments, of course, but those 
we'll try again before deciding they are worthy or unwortny to put on 
our list, PINK DIAMOND, Ibelieve, was the most beautiful thing in our 
garden, It is a soft pastel pink, tall and heavily ruffled, Julia Mae, 
very much like Pink Diamond in color, was a close runner-up, Both 
were much better than C,D, Fortnam which was not up to its usual qual- 
ity this year,Everyone who saw RUFFLED EBONY oh-d and ah-d over it,It 
is a silky black with deep wine throat, not so large as Ace of Spades 
or Black Cherry, but: suck béautiful ruffling! FIRE OPAL tons the ore 
ange class, The older Circe and Boccherini were nice, but they don't 
nave the fire and life that’ Fire Opal has, If you’ like the odd ones, 
COPISR WUsine 2S "rt. 1t ia an wmusval color, hard to describes, sort 
of rose and brown, intensely ruffled and velvety, BURMA ROSE is an- 
Ovoct pura on everything bout color, which is) much like that of Miss 
Wisconsin, GOLD BOND, a clear rich yellow, was fine, Flower heads 
longer than Gold but not so deep a yellow, Gold is still my favorite 
of the yellows, Two new white ones vied for first place in that class, 
They were SNOWDRIFT and WHITE EXCELSIOR.MOTHER FISCHER isn't out of 
the race with the newer ones, however, 
We had many visitors to our garden last summer in spite of the wea. 
ther, In fact one lady came on a2 rainy day equipped with rubber boots, 
We are always glad to meet our customers and talk "Glads", and es- 
pesiclly if we ‘can be of help, 
AFRICAN VIOLETS 
Our venture into, African Violets has proved highly successful for a 
beginning, You might be interested to know that we are raising them 
under fluorescent lights, Due to lack of room, our violet project will 
continue to be a Sideline only, (If I could only have a small green- 
house and raise all I want to ?! ) We have quite a selection of new var 
Deneeen cna 1) hope willbe large enough for, sales this summer,Have 
one of the new double pinks on order, but won't have any of them for 
sale this year, If you are an African Violet fan, be sure to come to 
see me and wetll have a "Violet Talk", 
Gil?) SHOP 
We had a fairly successful season with our GIFT SHOP in spite of 
the scarcity of “summer pecpla" traveling around, Hope to do better 
this year, We need some new handmade items for our shop, so, if you 
